


Afterwards

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: David Rose is an emotional mess, Honeymoon, M/M, Patrick is a button, happiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:54:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23716270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: The wedding's over. They've said their goodbyes.  Their honeymoon's a week together in the apartment without anyone bothering them, and David doesn't know how to be this happy, and sad, together, at once.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 82
Kudos: 488





	Afterwards

**Author's Note:**

> With grateful thanks to Siria for audiencing, and dogeared for beta.

The silence in Patrick’s apartment— _their_ apartment, David corrects himself—is almost too much. 

David sits on the edge of Patrick’s bed— _their_ bed—and stares at the fold of Patrick’s favorite blue sweater on the shelf in front of him. He can feel his thoughts running through his head like they’ve been fitted with tap shoes, making noise as they pass. A flash of the ceremony, of Patrick’s smile as David slipped a ring onto his finger; the warmth of his mother’s hand against his cheek as she said goodbye; the sound of his own glad laughter as Stevie pulled him up to dance at the reception; the tiny tremor of his sister’s arm against his back as their parents drove away.

David covers his face with his hands for a moment, but it doesn’t make the film reel of the past thirty-six hours dim. He wishes he had a clear thought, one single moment he could focus on, but he’s tired and perhaps just a touch hungover, and his pores have not had the correct attention since he was unmarried, so it’s hardly surprising he can’t marshal control over his mind.

“You okay?” Patrick asks, sitting down beside him.

David drops his hands and nods immediately.

Patrick takes David’s right hand in his left, links their fingers. “I gotta say, silence is not high on the list of ‘David Rose is okay’ signs.”

David sniffs. “David Rose-Brewer.” Patrick smiles, the kind of smile that tugs just a little at the corners of his mouth; the kind that reminds David he is lucky beyond measure. That smile has always been his undoing, and right now it makes his eyes fill with tears again. “I’m so happy,” he says, unsteadily.

Patrick’s expression shifts into one of empathy. “Mmmhmm,” he offers. 

David tips his head back and blinks rapidly, swallows hard. “It’s just.” He stops there.

Patrick leans to press a soft kiss to David’s temple. “It’s been a lot.”

“It’s been a lot,” David agrees, nodding vigorously.

Patrick pulls him in closer, so that David has to lay his head on his shoulder. “I think . . .” Patrick’s breathing is steady and regular, something David envies, tears dripping off his nose. “Naps.”

David huffs. “Aren’t we supposed to be fucking like bunnies right now?”

“Do you want to fuck like bunnies right now?”

David shakes his head. 

“Yeah, see . . .” Patrick stands and gently pulls David up with him, slips his arms around David’s waist. “It’s been a hell of a day. And a night. And a morning.” He leans in and kisses the side of David’s neck, then wraps him in a hug. 

David feels his face collapsing. “It’s just that going to miss them so much,” he says, hiccupping.

“I know.”

“And I’m so _happy_ ,” David repeats, though his voice breaks.

“Me too,” Patrick says evenly, and David wishes he could bottle whatever it is that makes Patrick so steady, because he would develop a drinking habit for whatever it is, immediately.

“Sorry,” David says, pulling away a little, dashing a hand over his face, careful not to pull too much on the skin beneath his eyes because bags are gauche.

“Take a shower,” Patrick suggests, pushing David around the foot of the bed. “You’ll feel better for it.”

David doubts it. His entire heart is twisting in his chest and there’s nothing hot water can do for that. “Okay?”

Partick smiles just a little. “I’ll be here, the whole time,” he says, making a little shooing motion with one hand. “That’s the deal now. You snagged me.”

“Good,” says David. “You needed a good snagging.” He feels his lips quirk despite himself.

Patrick raises one eyebrow. “Oh, there’ll be snagging,” he says, confidently. “I got all kinds of plans for you.”

David tries not to smile at that; presses his lips together as he turns to wander over to the bathroom. He looks back before he closes the door, and Patrick’s still watching him with an expression that suggests he’s pretty fond of David. David feels pretty fond right back.

*****

The shower does help, which is annoying on the one hand and a relief on the other. David lingers over his nine-step skincare regimen, and only then wraps a towel around his hips and cracks the door. Patrick’s sprawled on their bed, still in his wedding clothes, shoes off but socks on, his tie wound around one hand. David wouldn’t call what he’s doing snoring, but there’s a repetitive, soft sound coming out of his half-open mouth, and as David crosses the room he narrows his eyes and yep, Patrick’s drooling.

“Hey,” says David, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Patrick closes his mouth and opens his eyes a little, looking confused, then happy, then one-hundred-percent doped up on something. 

“Did you take a pill?” David asks sympathetically.

“Did I . . . what?” Patrick asks, his expression shifting back to confused.

David shakes his head. “It’s nothing.” He leans in and kisses Patrick right on the mouth, because that’s the kind of thing he’s been able to do for a while, but they’re married now, and that makes it different. “Now _you_ should shower.”

Patrick grumbles and turns onto his side. “I don’t think so.”

“You’d feel better.”

“I feel great,” Patrick says, grinning lopsidedly, a grin that turns into a yawn. “I’d feel greater if you came and had a very small nap with me.”

“I,” says David, trying not to laugh, “would like to take a very large nap with you, but your . . .” He shakes his head a little, and waves a hand over Patrick. “. . . everything is sloppy right now.”

Patrick huffs at that. “Is not.”

“Go.”

Patrick sighs, but sits up and swings his legs off the side of bed. “Task master,” he says, but there’s no heat to it. He drops his tie and heads toward the bathroom, shedding his shirt as he passes the couch.

David watches until the bathroom door closes, then—just this once—drops his own towel on the floor and crawls in between the sheets, wriggling into place beneath the rumpled duvet. The bed’s slightly warm from Patrick’s body heat, and David sighs blissfully as his head hits the pillow. He enjoys thirty seconds or so of beautiful not-thinking, and then the tap-dancing thoughts return.

His heart feels tender, even bruised, stretched to capacity by all the love pressed in there since the previous morning. It’s as if every act of caring was a note written by someone dear to him and stuffed into his chest as though it were a mailbox. He wants to open each note and savor it, but he’s not sure he can. Eventually, he promises himself, he’ll crack open each moment, remember exactly the expression on Ronnie’s face when she told him she’d come after Patrick in a heartbeat if he messed up David’s life, or the sound of Twyla singing for their first dance, or god, just their first dance. Patrick looked proud, and loved, and David drifts for a while on the memory of that.

He wakes as Patrick gets into bed beside him. “What?” he asks sleepily.

“Nothing,” Patrick says, getting comfortable. 

He smells great. “You smell great,” mumbles David.

“Thanks?” Patrick laughs softly and leans over to kiss David’s forehead.

“I’m asleep,” David breathes, and Patrick makes an approving noise as he settles back against his own pillow. He reaches out a hand, and David takes it.

*****

When David wakes, the light coming through the drapes is late-afternoon gold, and the apartment is quiet and still. Patrick’s breathing is the only thing to listen to, except for his own heartbeat as he rolls to his side and studies Patrick’s face. 

_I’ve never liked a smile as much as I like yours. I’ve never felt as safe as I do when I’m with you. I’ve never known love like I have when we’re together._

Patrick pulls in a long, slow breath and opens his eyes. His mouth quirks. “I felt you staring,” he says softly.

David smiles, and his eyes fill. Something’s happened to him, to everything inside him, and he can’t seem to contain it, it just spills out. 

“Hey,” Patrick whispers, and reaches out to cup David’s face. “What is it?”

“It’s just . . .” He laughs, and it’s messy even to his own ears. “We did it. We got married. I got you forever.”

Patrick nods, a warm smile on his face. “Yeah.”

“And you got me.”

“In every way,” Patrick says and leans in to kiss David softly. It’s a slow, sweet kiss, and David sinks right into it, tugs at Patrick until he settles closer, their bodies touching chest to toe. There’s such luxury to this—not just in the undisturbed quiet of the room, the sunlight, the pace they’ve set, but in the sheer fact of time. They have a whole life ahead, David thinks, and he shivers as Patrick moves his hand from his face, trails his fingers lightly down David’s arm. David gently tugs on Patrick’s bottom lip, hears Patrick’s answering tiny hum of pleasure.

Patrick pulls back a fraction, rolls them both so that David’s bearing his weight. “Hey,” he says.

“What?”

“I say we fuck like bunnies,” Patrick replies, and David laughs out loud, lifts his head to kiss Patrick again.

They don’t rush. They could—god knows the way David feels when Patrick touches him lights up some kind of fire that he barely trusts they can extinguish—but it feels important right now to take it slow. It’s like some kind of consecration, the way they touch and twist and slowly roll their hips against one another. David kisses Patrick’s collarbone and his shoulder, the curve of his upper arm, the vulnerable skin on the inside of his elbow, all the places he’s been gifted the opportunity to touch. His hands roam where his mouth can’t yet, thumbing Patrick’s nipple as he drags his teeth against the inside of Patrick’s wrist. He pulls one of Patrick’s fingers into his mouth and sucks on it in a way that makes Patrick’s breathing stutter.

“C’mere,” says Patrick, rolling them both so they can kiss again, wet and lush, tongues and lips and breath. Patrick kicks the covers away, then twists his fingers into David’s hair, and David feels like there’s pure electricity between that point on his body and his cock. He groans into Patrick’s mouth; Patrick tugs a little, and that makes David gasp as every inch of his skin lights up. Patrick palms David’s ass with his free hand, then scrapes his nails across the small of David’s back.

“Jesus.” David mangles the word, pressing back into Patrick’s touch, and whines softly when Patrick does it again. He licks a stripe from Patrick’s throat to his ear, noses into the hair at Patrick’s temple and glances kisses over his face, back to his mouth, back to his delicious, filthy, beautiful mouth that’s slick against his.

Patrick shifts so that he can press David down into the mattress again, their cocks dragging against one another as David lets his legs fall open. “ _David_ ,” Patrick says, sounding wrecked, so warm against David that it’s as if he’s feverish, and David bucks his hips, brings both hands to Patrick’s ass.

“Here,” David whispers, “like this,” and he sets a pace, pushing up against Patrick, heat building low in his belly at the expression on Patrick’s face. Patrick’s utterly focused, rocking into David, small moans of pleasure spilling out of his mouth, but there’s something else, something that makes David’s heart squeeze. “You look . . .” 

“Hmm?” Patrick catches his own bottom lip between his teeth as he thrusts.

David shakes his head, whimpers as Patrick kisses him, all finesse gone. _Vulnerable_ , David thinks, _he looks vulnerable_ , and he wraps his arms tighter around Patrick’s back. He gets to see him like this, gets to know him when he’s not steady, and god, there is nothing he wouldn’t do for him. Nothing. 

The kiss breaks. “Love you,” Patrick manages, and David brings a hand to his mouth, wets two fingers, shifts again to press them between the cheeks of Patrick’s ass and run them around his hole.

“Oh god,” Patrick says, trembling, visibly trying to hold himself in check.

“I want to feel you,” David manages, thrusting up meaningfully. 

Patrick whines, closes his eyes. “David . . .”

“I _need_ you.”

David presses one finger in just enough and Patrick shudders, hips jerking without rhythm as he presses his face into the crook of David’s neck and comes. It’s the hottest thing imaginable; David’s left restless beneath him, hips twitching as Patrick shudders again and stills. “Oh god . . .” He presses kisses into Patrick’s hair. “You’re perfect. Fucking perfect.”

Patrick lifts his head. He looks dazed and happy and his mouth twitches into a smile. “You,” he pants, and David nods eagerly,.

“Yes, me,” he says and covers his face with both hands as Patrick slips down his body, through the mess on David’s belly, and takes David in his mouth. “Oh, _fuck_.”

It’s obscene, the sounds Patrick’s making, and the scent of his sweat and come, and David shifts in agitation until Patrick brings his hands to David’s hips to very firmly press down. David yelps helplessly; being manhandled by Patrick is blissful, so necessary to him, and when Patrick points his tongue and licks up the vein on the underside of David’s cock, David shakes and comes right into Patrick’s mouth.

By the time David’s able to form words again, Patrick is cleaning them up with a soft, damp cloth. “Oh my _god_ ,” David murmurs.

Patrick looks stunning, naked, flushed, and more than a little smug. He pitches the cloth over the end of the bed and lies down next to David, pressing their lips gently together. “Mr. Rose-Brewer,” he whispers. “That was something.”

David laughs and burrows against him, lets Patrick pull the sheets and duvet back over their cooling bodies. “Mr. Rose-Brewer,” he says, just to hear himself repeat it. He’s sleepy—well-earned, he thinks—but not asleep as Patrick gently combs his fingers through his hair.

“There is only one person I’ve ever let do that,” David murmurs.

“This?”

“Hmmm.”

Patrick says nothing for a moment or two. Then: “Who was it?” David looks up at him and Patrick’s not meeting his eye.

“You?” he says with just the tiniest mocking lilt to his voice.

Patrick visibly blushes, and tries to chew up a smile. He glances at David. “I wasn’t sure if . . .”

“. . . I’d casually bring up an ex while we’re enjoying our newly-married, fucked-like-bunnies glow?”

“Yeah.” Patrick wrinkles his nose. “Sorry.”

David rubs a hand up and down Patrick’s arm, remembers in sudden, vivid detail the way Patrick looked after he kissed him for the first time. “You make things right,” he says softly.

Patrick swallows hard—there’s not a chance in hell he doesn’t remember the night he said those words to David, trying to persuade him to give him a chance. “David . . .”

“I love you,” David says, and thinks, as he closes his eyes, that the breath Patrick lets out is maybe the best thing he’s heard all day.

*****

For the next day-and-half, David’s feelings swing between joy and despair, covering plenty of ground in between. Patrick’s a fixed and solid point from which he can wade out into emotionally choppy waters, always knowing when he needs to come back, Patrick will pull him in. It’s perfect until it’s not, until Stevie drops in for ten minutes to drop off an office box full of cards from the wedding; until they’re sitting on the couch, opening envelopes, and David can’t help welling up with tears at every hand-written congratulation. Patrick, on the other hand, says things like “oh, that’s nice,” and “sweet thought,” and remains utterly composed throughout. It grates on David, like a gift of a dozen cheese boards where the brie and fig jam are at different temperatures. It’s irrational. Fuck it.

“I don’t get it,” he says at last, throwing down a card on the coffee table in exasperation and pausing to blow his nose. “How does this stuff not move you?”

Patrick raises an eyebrow very slowly. “I’m sorry?”

David blows his nose again.

“You think this doesn’t move me?”

David waves a hand at Patrick’s perfectly buttoned-up, pale-blue shirt, at the t-shirt underneath that he knows he ironed, at his patient expression and his non-existent brows. “How would I know?” he asks sharply. “What about all of this,”—he waves a hand—“says, ‘I’m moved?’”

Patrick tightens his jaw, fiddles with the half-open envelope in his hands. “You’re not being fair.”

“I’m not being fair?” says David, sitting back. “ _I’m_ not being fair?”

“What do you want from me right now?” Patrick asks. 

“Emotion! I want to know you feel all of . . . _this_ ,” he manages, gesturing at himself. “I know your parents didn’t move away, I know your sister’s not . . .”

“David.”

“But I am in _distress_ , and you’re so _placid_ , and . . . “

“David.”

“What!”

Patrick stares at him for a long moment. “I did.”

David turns that over in his mind. “Did what?”

“I moved away.”

David waits a moment more, then shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”

Patrick hangs his head for a second, wets his lips and stares at the rug. “David, I miss my parents all the time.” He winces, and David feels a sudden, unexpected pain. Patrick turns his head and offers him a smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “I thought, honest to god, that I’d live and die back home.”

David swipes at his own face with the back of one hand. “In a good way?” he asks eventually.

“In a good way,” Patrick agrees, rubbing his hands together. “I thought I’d have a house not too far from my folks. I thought for a really long time that Rachel and I would raise a family in that town and . . .”

David reaches out a hand and rests it on Patrick’s arm.

“I ran.” Patrick lets out a stuttering, uncertain breath, and David feels like a heel. “I broke up with Rachel and I _ran_.”

“I know,” David whispers.

“And I never, ever gave myself the chance to think about that.” Patrick looks up at him and his eyes are shining. “Because I met you. And it changed everything.”

David swallows hard and looks at a nondescript point somewhere on the wall above the bathroom door.

“Things with you were so good. I found my _place_. But . . .”

“You still missed your parents.”

Patrick nods. 

“Why did you never tell me?”

Patrick lets out a frustrated breath. “Because I keep things together. It’s what I do.”

“Ugh.” David rubs Patrick’s back for a second. Stepping outside of his own emotional state uses muscles that are still stiff and sore, but he knows what to say, who he wants to be. “I’m sorry. I’m . . . I’m a mess and I hate it and I just took it all out on you.”

Patrick hitches a shoulder like it’s no big deal.

David shakes his head. “I didn’t know, and I just assumed, and now I made a whole heap of trash for us to deal with.”

“You didn’t make it.”

“Um, I was here for my tantrum, so . . .” David pauses. “We need tea,” he decides, needing something to do with his hands and his brain. “I need to . . .” he waves a hand “. . . rehydrate because . . .” 

Patrick’s quiet the whole time that David busies himself with the kettle and mugs and teabags. He doesn’t pick up another card, or tidy those scattered on the coffee table, or even sit back on the couch so that he’s more comfortable. It sets David’s whole body on edge, and magnifies the sound of the teaspoon in the mugs.

“Here,” he says, setting one cup down on an open spot on the table for Patrick before moving to sit down himself. “Dollar for your thoughts.”

“A whole dollar,” Patrick says, looking interested. “Inflation?”

“Market value,” David says. “I learned from some guy who hangs around the store.”

Patrick smiles just a little, but it’s genuine, and David is glad.

“I never explained leaving,” Patrick says after a moment. “To my parents.”

“Hmm, I think they’ve probably pieced it together by now.”

Patrick shrugs. “Maybe. But I feel like I owe them a conversation.”

“Perhaps,” Davd says softly. “When you’re ready you could?”

Patrick nods. “Yeah.” He sits, hunched forward, one fisted hand covering his mouth. “Do you think I hurt them?” he asks at last.

“Your parents?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” David breathes, setting down his tea. “Come here. Come here right now,” and Patrick does, leans into David in the way that David’s been leaning into him for days. 

*****

Patrick heads to the store the next morning, ostensibly to accept a delivery, despite the fact that Jocelyn is filling in for them and is 100% able to deal with UPS. But the store is where Patrick’s had most of his conversations with his parents since he moved to Schitt’s Creek, and David would bet something valuable—a sweater, perhaps—that he’s planning on taking the phone into the storeroom and calling up his mum and dad from there. Habits are soothing.

Once Patrick’s gone David picks up his own phone and stares at it for a moment, not really seeing the familiar engagement photo on his lock screen. Then he shakes himself. “David Rose-Brewer,” he says, just a little scolding, and then he scrolls through his contacts and calls his mother.

“Darling!” Moira says, sounding delighted when she answers. “One moment . . . IT’S MY SON, DEBRA . . . so much going on this morning.” There’s a wealth of background noise.

“Where _are_ you?” asks David, wrinkling his nose.

“I’m on set! We’re already shooting, David. Time waits for no one.”

“Ohhhhh, so this is a bad time.”

“No. The carpenters must finagle a cunning solution to the ambulatory habits of our parrot before . . .”

David feels his face do something complicated. “Parrot?”

“An essential plot device, David. The colors magenta and terracotta will feature prominently in our opening monologues. But how are you? I trust you and your beau have been libidinally atuned?”

“Um, ew?”

“You might remember I once played the fortune teller in the Natal Theatre’s production of ‘How Now, Sally!’ and I seem to remember that when one’s rising house is in the . . . or was it Virgo . . . in any case, September honeymoons are well known for the daring confluence of sexual energies they offer.”

David dies a little inside. “Oooookay,” he says weakly.

“Have you taken so much as a perigrination to the parking lot?” Moira asks, then laughs. “I remember your father and I . . .”

“Thanks, but no, absolutely not,” David says, cutting her off before she can tell him something that will burn out the center of his brain. “How’s dad?”

“Your father is so happy. I can’t tell you the boost this has been to his sense of derring-do.”

David nods. “Sure.” He bites at his lip for a moment while his mother yells toward Debra again. Poor Debra. “So, I was just calling to say . . .”

“Oh no, are you well? Did you strain something? Your lumbar spine has always been so weak, I should have warned Patrick.”

“Lumbar spine’s doing _just_ fine,” David assures her. “I was _calling_ because . . .”

“Yes? Do hurry up darling, now is not the time for one to dawdle. The parrot has been corralled.”

“I miss you,” David blurts out, and then covers his mouth with his hand.

There’s a moment of silence on the other end of the phone. “And I miss you,” says Moira, quieter now.

“It’s real weird without you here.” David chews on his lip for a second. “And I miss that godforsaken motel room . . .”

Moira clucks at the other end of the phone. “I believe Stevie would be glad to give you the honeymooner rate for the room with the vibrating heart bed.”

David blinks. “It vibrates?”

“You will need several rolls of quarters, but . . .”

“You know what, never mind.” This was all a terrible mistake.

Moira hushes him. “It has been so very odd not to see you every morning,” she confesses. “And to note that I _wish_ to see you every morning.”

David smiles just a little, lets out a breath. “Yeah.”

“So if you, too, are feeling somewhat at sea, it is to be expected.” She lowers her voice further. “My new assistant is not yet quite broken in and is beckoning me to return to the nurses station when I am clearly otherwise occupied.”

“Debra?”

“Deb-ra,” Moira agrees.

“Well, I shouldn’t take up more of your time. Go . . . do whatever Vivian Blake must do.”

“A small matter of a stolen leopard-skin tutu which once belonged to Katharine Hepburn, I believe, and on which Vivian bid at the last fundraiser!” 

Completely illogical, thinks David. Kate would never. “Well that sounds special. I’ll talk to you soon?”

“Mwah! Love to my boy.”

David smiles. “Love you.” And he hangs up.

*****

It’s two hours and 79 pages of _How to Talk Business With Someone Who Thinks They Understand It, But Doesn’t_ when Patrick comes home. He looks tired—makes sense, David thinks, stuffing his book beneath a pillow—but relieved, too, like a weight’s been lifted. 

“How’d it go?” David asks.

“Fine,” says Patrick, throwing his keys on the kitchen table. “Stock’s all put away, Jocelyn’s sold twice as much as we usually do. Hey, thanks for doing the dishes.”

David raises an eyebrow and waits.

Patrick eyes him warily or a second then shakes his head and lets out a sigh. “Okay, I called my parents.”

“Aha.” David smiles and shifts to sit cross-legged on the couch. He pats the open seat beside him. “And?”

Patrick kisses him as he sits down. “It was good. They . . . kept apologizing.”

“Oh, dear,” says David, mashing his lips together and nodding supportively.

“I kept trying to explain that I was the one who . . . they wouldn’t listen. They worry they should have made it easier for me somehow and . . .”

David leans in and kisses Patrick’s temple, then reaches to turn his head toward him and kisses him properly, a long, slow kiss that Patrick wholly returns. When they break, David smiles, rubs his thumb along Patrick’s cheekbone. “We should take a trip,” he says. “Go up there for a long weekend.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” David looks at him, takes stock of the fine lines beside Patrick’s eyes, the shadow at his jaw from deciding not to shave, the cowlick at his forehead that betrays how curly his hair would get if he let it grow. “It’s going to be okay, you know?”

Patrick huffs, amused. “That’s my line.”

“Well, I like how it feels in my mouth.”

“I like how other things feel in your mouth,” says Patrick, the corner of his lip quirking.

“Mr Rose-Brewer!” David breathes in affected shock.

“Mmhmm.”

“I talked to my mother. . .”

Patrick blinks. “Gotta say, that’s not where I thought we were going with this.”

“. . . and she told me the heart bed at the motel vibrates.”

Patrick raises an eyebrow. “Okay, but can we keep that information for another day? I’m not really looking to drive across town when we have a bed right over there.”

“That doesn’t vibrate.”

“Oh, I can make it vibrate,” Patrick says back. 

David is utterly invested in testing that theory, and they stumble over to the bed, swiftly divesting themselves and each other of clothing along the way. He twists to push back the duvet and sheet while keeping one hand firmly wrapped around Patrick’s elbow, which only succeeds in tumbling them both onto the mattress. David laughs, a sound that shifts into an appreciative “ _oh_ ,” as Patrick eases his underwear away from his body and straddles David, bare chested and flushed and still in his boxer briefs. David plucks at those with both hands, making a noise of disapproval. “This is _so_ incorrect,” he points out, and Patrick laughs at him before David knocks him off balance, and sets to deftly making the underwear situation right.

It’s delightful, David thinks, to be naked and married and fucking in the early afternoon; delightful the way that Patrick kisses him; delightful the way he can make Patrick curse; delightful the way Patrick has him laughing one minute and moaning the next. He reaches for the lube and fumbles it, and it’s all so good, even his clumsiness, and when Patrick’s spread out beneath him, face down and pressing back onto David’s fingers as he opens him up, David can’t help the praise that spills over his lips. “So good,” he murmurs, sitting gently on the back of Patrick’s thighs. “You’re so good. Can’t _stand_ how good you are.”

When David presses in, he’s not sure who makes the sound that rings in his ears, but when he circles his hips he knows it’s Patrick who cries out. “Like that,” he murmurs into Patrick’s ear, “like that,” and Patrick moans again, grabs at the pillows to have something in his hands. The gesture sets off such heat low in David’s belly he has to bite his lip to stay focused. He wants to draw this out, luxuriate in this, in the slick heat of Patrick all around him, but he can’t, needs him, needs this, thrusts harder each time Patrick makes a sound and before long Patrick’s stiffening beneath him, calling for David as he comes, and David follows, messily emptying himself with a startled cry. He shudders, his orgasm wringing everything out of him, them collapses on Patrick’s back.

“Mmmmph,” Patrick manages after a long moment punctuated only by the rapid pitch of their breathing. “David . . .”

David pulls out slowly and rolls onto his back, forearm thrown across his face as he tries to make a thought.

“No,” Patrick grumbles, pulling his arm away, and then he kisses him softly, his hand cupping David’s jaw. They gentle one another, exchanging whispered confidences, kissing and touching until they fall still.

“I’m sticky,” David grumbles petulantly once the little jolts of pleasure running up his spine begin to slow.

“ _You’re_ sticky,” says Patrick, face buried in the pillow beside David’s head.

David swallows and looks at the ceiling, pulls in a deep breath and shifts to stand up, swaying when he manages it. “Be right back,” he mumbles and heads the bathroom, catches sight of the hickey Patrick’s sucked into the skin below his collarbone and he smiles as he wets a washcloth.

He ambles back to the bed, enjoying the view. “I love you,” he says as he gently cleans Patrick up, urging him over to the side of the mattress without a wet spot. “And we need to buy a lot more sheets.”

Patrick laughs softly. “I like the sound of that.”

“Good.” David sets the washcloth on the floor, crawls across the mattress and pulls Patrick firmly back against him, spooning him soundly. Patrick trembles and stills, trembles and stills, and David pulls up the covers before curling around Patrick again, hooking his chin over Patrick’s shoulder.

“Are you happy?” he asks, and Patrick shifts enough to look back at him incredulously. He pulls David’s hand up from where it rests against his stomach and uses it to cover his heart. 

“I don’t know how to tell you how much,” he says, and David smiles at him, says, “me too,” and feels steady from the inside out.


End file.
